


this privacy between us

by TLvop



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Comfort No Hurt, Domestic, Established Relationship, F/M, Friendship/Love, Hard of Hearing Clint Barton, Intimacy, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Partnership, Pregnancy, Shaving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-26
Updated: 2012-11-26
Packaged: 2017-11-19 14:42:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/574380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TLvop/pseuds/TLvop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What's up?" he asks, leaning against the sink. </p>
<p>Natasha's look is long, and considering. "I have a problem." </p>
<p>"Let me guess," Clint says. "Pregnancy and shaving don't go together that great."</p>
            </blockquote>





	this privacy between us

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place in the same universe as ashen_key's [let's start with honesty (the lies will happen later)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/509585) during the pregnancy that leads to it.
> 
> I was researching safety razors, and found an anecdote from a woman who said she first started using them after her husband took to shaving her legs for her with his during pregnancy. The idea caught in my brain, and lo: a fic.

Clint's brushing his teeth when he catches a glimpse of Nat in the mirror, peeking out of the bedroom, dressed in the oversized long t-shirt he bought her two days ago when he was in Chicago (it's stamped with the Bears logo to appease her). She turns, and smiles when she sees him. He hooks one of his hearing aids over his left ear and raises his eyebrows at her reflection (he doesn't smile back. He has a toothbrush in his mouth).

She leans against the door jam, watching him.

Clint holds up a finger, and spits out the toothpaste before rinsing his mouth out. He turns around, putting his other hearing aid in. "What's up?" he asks, leaning against the sink. 

Natasha's look is long, and considering. "I have a problem." 

"Let me guess," Clint says. "Pregnancy and shaving don't go together that great." She snorts, acknowledging, though it's _frustrated_ as much as _amused_. He figured; he's only ever seen her with more than a day of leg-stubble when she's been on bed rest or otherwise not allowed near sharp things. "Hey," Clint says, straightening. "I can take care of that for you. Barton Barber service, etc. Meet you in the kitchen in two?"

"If you cut me, you're a dead man," says Natasha, though her smile is genuine.

"Promises, promises, Romanoff," Clint says before she saunters off (and if you think a Definitely Pregnant woman can't saunter, you've... well, clearly had very little to no experience with Natasha Romanoff. She can saunter in combat boots. Clint is very impressed). He ducks to rummage through the cabinet under the sink to grab his shaving bowl and a new razor blade. He delicately interchanges the blade with the one he'd been using on his razor, trashing the old one in the Altoid tin he's repurposed. He tosses everything— the brush, washcloth, razor, and his least scented shaving soap—into the bowl, before heading out. 

Nat's sitting in a kitchen chair pulled solidly over the tile, nursing a cup of coffee. There's another sitting on the counter, and even though Clint knows it's decaf he sets down the implements to take a gulp of it, closing his eyes happily.

"Did you want breakfast, first?" Natasha asks, stretching a bit, and he laughs.

"I'll be okay." Clint sets down his mug, empties the bowl carefully onto the floor by Nat's chair, and goes to fill it with hot water. He grabs the olive oil while he's by the sink, bringing it back with him.

"Olive oil?" His wife says, tone somewhere between _if you waste my olive oil you will regret it_ and _you've got to be kidding me._

"Ran out of my normal stuff. I was just doing without, but, you know." Clint sits down in front of her, setting the bowl and olive oil to the side. He dabs a small amount of olive oil on his fingers. "Leg, my lady?" He asks, in a ridiculous of an accent as he can manage, and is rewarded with her laughing. She extends her right, and he dots the oil down her leg before massaging it in. 

She hums approvingly, so he massages her leg longer than is strictly necessary before wetting the soap puck and running it over the front of her lower leg, leaving thick streaks of soap. Nat's not pregnant enough that she can't watch him, and does so with the lazy expression Clint knows hides analysis. So she can't say he surprises her with the shaving brush, but she still flinches and laughs a bit helplessly when he starts lathering the soap on her leg. 

"Ticklish, are we?" Clint asks, hovering over the spot that made her laugh until she kicks out her leg slightly and he moves on.

"Don't even start," she says, rubbing at her eyes, laughter dying down.

"I'm a horrible person." Clint grins. The soap lathered, he swishes the brush in the water to clear it off and sets it aside. "Incoming razor," he says, dipping it in the water. "Try not to flinch."

"Fuck you too, Barton," Nat says, mildly, though the muscles in her leg stiffen slightly under his hand. 

Clint knows better than to tell her to relax, and he's too focused to rise to the barb with the obvious innuendo. Instead, he sets the razor just lightly against her skin, letting gravity hold it there instead of any pressure he applies, and shaves carefully along the grain of her hair, swishing the razor in the water whenever the lather builds up. He spreads the extra lather with his fingers, and follows the curve of her calf and the muscles tensed under the surface, the shallow dimple that indents her skin a little above where her calf meets her Achilles'. (He goes particularly slowly over her Achilles'. It's not just Greek god-heroes whose lives depend on their feet.)

When the whole of her right leg is smooth (it only takes one pass, though he has to apply more lather, because Natasha's hair is a lot less coarse than his beard, jerk) and he's cleaned it of soapy residue with the washcloth, he presses a kiss to the top of her calf, where it hits the side of her knee, and looks up. Natasha's watching him with an expression he can't quite place, eyes full of meaning but face flat with the secrecy of things she's unlikely to share. His breath catches in his throat, watching her. Then she shakes her head, hair falling into her face, and smiles.

"You're not going to leave me half hairy, are you?" she asks, lightly, extending her left leg.

He smiles, and pours oil onto his fingertips again. He's left in an uncertain emotional place at the relief from the tension, but he can roll with what she wants. "You could start a trend," he says, rubbing it into her leg. "Like those half-jean-half-shorts things."

"America was a very strange place in the 90s," Natasha declaims, stretching her leg with pleasure at the massage. "Later, you should do that to my feet."

Clint breathes a laugh. "Yes, ma'am."


End file.
